EDC to Evaluate Influence of School Districts on University Principal Prep Programs

18-month study funded by The Wallace Foundation

NEWTON, MA | May 8, 2008

Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC) has been awarded $1.2 million by The Wallace Foundation to evaluate the relationships between school districts and their local universities in preparing principals to lead urban schools. The Center for Leadership and Learning Communities at EDC will conduct the national evaluation, focusing on school districts that receive funding from Wallace across the country.

EDC’s evaluation study will examine the range and nature of relationships that exist between districts and universities, and how these relationships contribute to or hinder the best principal preparation. High quality leadership preparation programs, collaboration among organizations, and district-university partnerships will all be examined as part of the study.

“We expect that study findings will provide important new insights about effective ways for districts and universities to collaborate in preparing the next generation of school principals to effectively lead our high need urban schools,” said EDC’s Cheryl King, director of the project with EDC’s Michele LaPointe and Margaret Terry Orr of Bank Street College.

EDC has many years of experience working with superintendents, principals, teacher leaders, and classroom teachers, and the learning communities they create. EDC’s work emphasizes the development of design experiments, the review of evidence, and the articulation of lessons learned. Its work with classroom teachers emphasizes school-based and district-wide systems that support professional learning.

Study results are expected to be available to the field in August 2009 and will be made available in short reports for use by school districts and universities.